Corporate Culture: Help or Hindrance
Prepared by: Ilya Bovkun, EPR10-english
Essay
on the topic:
“Corporate culture: help or hindrance”
“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you, and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.”
Edgar Schein, professor MIT Sloan School of Management Nowadays, in the end of 2011, we can make a clear overview of the remarkable events that took place not a long time ago. And though some people might argue that the hardest economic crisis since 1929 still hasn`t finished, and is going to be continued, we are able to make certain conclusions and ask a couple of thrilling questions: “Why, when all other companies experienced dramatic collapse, some of them even managed not to reduce, but to increase their sales and market share?” Or “Why a company that has been operating for 200 years already is pushed out of its market by some barely known firm?”
What makes these events possible? Magic? Well, you definitely will not believe it if you are older than 8 years old. Some highest creatures? Well, it is quite unlikely too. Santa Claus? Who knows, maybe... But science believes that there are more realistic reasons for such events that in general are called invisible strategic assets. One of such assets, supposed by most of the scientists as the most important one, is called corporate or organization culture [1].
To begin with, let us formulate, what is corporate or organization culture. By Edgar H. Schein organizational culture is defined as “A pattern of shared basic assumptions invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that have worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems” [2]. As we can see, concept of corporate culture is of great importance for
Essay
on the topic:
“Corporate culture: help or hindrance”
“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you, and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.”
Edgar Schein, professor MIT Sloan School of Management Nowadays, in the end of 2011, we can make a clear overview of the remarkable events that took place not a long time ago. And though some people might argue that the hardest economic crisis since 1929 still hasn`t finished, and is going to be continued, we are able to make certain conclusions and ask a couple of thrilling questions: “Why, when all other companies experienced dramatic collapse, some of them even managed not to reduce, but to increase their sales and market share?” Or “Why a company that has been operating for 200 years already is pushed out of its market by some barely known firm?”
What makes these events possible? Magic? Well, you definitely will not believe it if you are older than 8 years old. Some highest creatures? Well, it is quite unlikely too. Santa Claus? Who knows, maybe... But science believes that there are more realistic reasons for such events that in general are called invisible strategic assets. One of such assets, supposed by most of the scientists as the most important one, is called corporate or organization culture [1].
To begin with, let us formulate, what is corporate or organization culture. By Edgar H. Schein organizational culture is defined as “A pattern of shared basic assumptions invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that have worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems” [2]. As we can see, concept of corporate culture is of great importance for